Dems limp to finish in Wisconsin

What seemed a few months ago like an unstoppable crusade to oust Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker now has the look of a marathon runner pulling up limp in the last mile.

Two weeks from Election Day, Democrats face the real prospect of defeat: The last three public polls of the race show the first-term Republican up between 4 and 9 points. Local Democrats are seething that the national party has been MIA from their recall effort. The state’s largest newspaper argued over the weekend that whatever Walker’s sins, he doesn’t deserve to be booted from office.

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And with fewer than 5 percent of voters undecided, the chance of a significant shift in sentiment in the closing days appears slight, even as the campaigns prepare to launch their final advertising spree.

“We’re cautiously optimistic,” said Phil Cox, executive director of the Republican Governors Association, which has spent more than $6 million on ads castigating Walker’s Democratic opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. “I don’t think the other side is going to be able to introduce new information about the governor. His image is relatively set at this point. Do I think things are incrementally moving in the right direction? Yes.”

Still, Democrats are unloading everything in their arsenal against Walker. The attacks extend far beyond their vehement opposition to the governor’s rollback of collective-bargaining rights that initially spurred the signature-gathering process six months ago.

On Monday, as the Wisconsin Democratic Party distributed a memo purporting to outline alleged felonies during Walker’s tenure as county executive, Barrett held a press conference to call on his opponent to release thousands of emails that are at the center of a criminal probe into whether his former employees conducted campaign business on government time.

Several of Walker’s former aides face charges for doing political work on the taxpayers’ dime in 2010, but Walker has insisted he’s not a target of the investigation.

“Walker is obviously trying to run out the clock and avoid accountability, but voters deserve the full truth before they go to the polls,” said Barrett, in a subtle acknowledgment he’s playing catch-up.

Walker, who spent the day campaigning with former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, dismissed the charges as “desperate.”

“They’ve moved a chunk of their messaging from jobs to ethics,” Cox said, “which tells me they think their hits on jobs aren’t working.”

“Isn’t the recall in itself becoming disingenuous?” said Walker spokeswoman Ciara Matthews. “They started this because of collective bargaining and now, right in the middle of the recall, there’s no mention of collective bargaining.”

But a top Democratic strategist, exasperated by claims that the party’s anti-Walker messaging is scattershot, said the multifront attack strategy is quite deliberate.

“One of the things we found when we polled is one message doesn’t work. It’s not a referendum on collective bargaining. There’s the job front, the women front, the John Doe [investigation]. The only way you beat Walker is you’ve got to hit all these things,” the Washington-based strategist said on condition of anonymity in order to speak candidly.